Turkey's opposition to announce presidential candidate in February

Turkey's six-party opposition alliance is set to announce in February their presidential candidate to challenge President Tayyip Erdogan's 20-year rule in elections set for May, an opposition party official said on Friday.

"The name of the (six-party opposition's) presidential candidate will probably be declared sometime in February," Unal Cevikoz, an adviser of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, told reporters.

The six-party alliance is seeking to forge a united platform but has yet to agree on a candidate to challenge Erdogan, who signaled on Wednesday the election date as May 14, a month earlier than he had earlier flagged.

Cevikoz said leaders of the six opposition parties would reveal on Jan. 30 in two documents their proposals for a transitional period to a parliamentary system and their government programme.

Earlier on Friday, Kilicdaroglu met with the nationalist Good Party Chair Meral Aksener to talk about the agenda of the Jan. 30 meeting, amid rumors over disagreement on the presidential candidate.

Kilicdaroglu on several occasions has greenlighted his candidacy should the opposition bloc agree on his name.

However, Aksener openly declared that she preferred one of the mayors of Ankara or Istanbul to be nominated as a candidate and announced a quick support for CHP’s Istanbul Mayor Imamoglu following his conviction by a Turkish court earlier this month.